Strongly Stated 
By: Ryan Jayne, Senior Policy Counsel
Ryan Dudley, State Policy Manager
May 18, 2026
Oklahoma has now done the bare minimum a decent state can do for children: It has stopped handing them marriage licenses.
Senate Bill 504 became law on May 13 despite Gov. Kevin Stitt’s refusal to sign it. When it takes effect on Nov. 1, Oklahoma will require every person getting married to be at least 18 — with no exceptions. That makes Oklahoma the 17th U.S. state, plus Washington, D.C., to completely ban child marriage. The bill passed the Senate 45–0, but only cleared the House 51–36, a grim reminder that “do not let adults marry children” is still treated as controversial in too many state capitols.
The FFRF Action Fund pushed for this win along with other coalition partners. Before the bill became law, we urged Oklahomans to call on Stitt to close the parental-consent loophole that allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to marry, a loophole that left young people, especially girls, vulnerable to forced marriage and trapped in abusive relationships they were often too young to legally exit. It will come as no surprise to our readers that child marriage is often tied to extremist patriarchal religious norms.
A just, secular society protects children and holds abusers accountable. It does not give abusers a legal shortcut to marry their victims.
Child marriage is not some faraway relic. Between 2000 and 2021, more than 314,000 children were legally married in the United States, some as young as 10 years old. Almost 90 percent of those children were girls, most of them married to adult men. At least 66,415 of those marriages involved a child too young to legally consent to sex or an age gap that would have made sex a crime under state law but for the marriage.
Even if a court grants a minor “emancipated” status, this does not magically give a teenager the legal rights you might expect. The legal trap is especially cruel when a child spouse tries to flee. Married minors often cannot independently hire a lawyer, file for divorce or obtain a protective order. Because they are still minors, they are frequently denied entry into domestic violence shelters and can be labeled runaways if they leave home. Unchained At Last has warned that domestic violence shelters routinely refuse unaccompanied minors because of liability concerns, and that a 17-year-old who leaves home can be taken into custody, have parents notified, and be returned home or placed in emergency shelter care.
This is why the emancipation excuse collapses on contact with reality. In Virginia, survivors warned legislators that an emancipation loophole did not protect coerced children. One survivor, married at 16 to a man 13 years older, said she could not escape to a domestic violence shelter, hire an attorney or enter a lease because she was still a minor.
Oklahoma finally stopped pretending that these loopholes are acceptable. Now states like California need to catch up.
Yes, California still has no absolute minimum marriage age. California law allows minors to marry with a court order and written consent from a parent or guardian. You must be 18 to get divorced, but there is no minimum age to marry if a parent or guardian consents and a court grants permission.
California has had chances to fix this. AB 2924, introduced in 2024, would have ended child marriage in the state. It died in committee. Instead, California lawmakers passed SB 575, maddeningly requiring reporting and study of underage marriages. There are plenty of issues that require careful study prior to legislative action, but this isn’t one of them. Child marriage is acknowledged internationally as a fundamental violation of human rights and needs to be banned, not studied.
California should be embarrassed. Oklahoma, not exactly famous for racing ahead on secular public policy, got this right while California is still dragging its feet.
But this is not just California’s problem. The country’s patchwork of laws lets adults shop for weak jurisdictions. As more states make child marriage illegal, places where it remains lawful are emerging as “havens.” When one state ends child marriage, neighboring states, or even states a few steps away, have reportedly seen increases in child marriage. Unchained At Last’s Fraidy Reiss has pointed to Maine, where the number of minors married reportedly tripled in 2021 after Pennsylvania, New York and Rhode Island ended child marriage, and to an uptick in Maryland after Virginia strengthened its law.
This is why our work cannot stop with one state. The Oklahoma ban is a great win, but every victory makes the remaining holdouts more visible, more dangerous and more indefensible. Every state that gets with the program increases the pressure on the states still protecting this human rights violation by calling it tradition, religious freedom, parental rights or judicial discretion.
There is no religious right to marry a child. There is no parental right to shackle a child into an abusive marriage. There is no judicial discretion worth preserving if the result is a child spouse who cannot enter a shelter, sign a lease, hire a lawyer, file for divorce or safely escape.
The solution is simple: Minors cannot marry, no exceptions.
Not 17 with a permission slip. Not 16 with a judge’s nod. Not younger with a pregnancy excuse. Not “emancipated” on paper while still blocked from the basic tools of escape.
If Oklahoma can do it, so can California and every other holdout.
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The FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations, and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues. The FFRF Action Fund is the advocacy arm of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a state/church watchdog and the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) with more than 41,000 members nationwide.
